Lieberman supported the other party's candidate for
president, but he has not been punished for that betrayal. The Dems
swallowed their anger and left him with his chairmanship and admitted
in into their Caucus.

But Lieberman is not WITH the caucus-- he has positioned himself within
it because that's the place from which he can inflict the most damage
on Obama
and the liberals. His alignment is with what the Republicans are trying
to achieve --which is to say making Obama fail-- but he's doing
it from inside the Democratic Party where he
can discredit the party by giving them (officially) a 60 vote bloc that
should allow them to pass ANY legislation, while one of that 60 is
really a mole, and he's taken on the job of throwing monkey wrenches
into anything that might be achieved.

Lieberman should be called out in and denounced in strong terms because what he is doing is most vile. To avenge himself
for his defeat in the Connecticut Democratic primary in 2006, he now
sacrifices everything that he use to say was good in order to punish
those who have hurt his feelings.

This is human monstrosity of a kind that it would take a Shakespeare to
show in its full primitive vengeful impulse. Can you imagine the
speeches Shakespeare would have given his Joe Lieberman, painting word
pictures of the world as he inhabits it and carries out the vengeful vandalism of
his world!

No forgiveness for those who wounded his ego by rejecting him in favor
of Lamont.. In that sense, it could well be that the ultimate target of
Lieberman's anger is the Democratic electorate of Connecticut that
rejected him, and that now wants health care reform to succeed.

Here's a pertinent piece to help flesh in this profound moral defect on
display with Joe Lieberman. Exposing this in a loud voice may be
politically most effective way of dealing with this situation.

To fail, but by kicking Lieberman out of the caucus-- calling him out
as a mole, and indicting the Republican Party for putting forward the
wholly obstructionist strategy that Joe LIeberman is but the saboteur
who serves that Republican strategy. Harboring as much bitterness
as Iago.

Kick him out-- expose a) the reality of your having but 59 votes in the
caucus and b) the reality of Lieberman playing a most vile role as
traitor and spy and saboteur, and c) the reality of the Republicans
wanting ONLY to make the other side look bad, and being indifferent as
to what would best meet the nation's present needs, which include
getting a hold on health care costs and on the tens of millions that
lack insurance.

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This is what the American people have to be helped to see. The
job of the Democrats --including Obama-- should be to expose to the
American people the purely destructive and amoral level which
their obstructionist opposition is coming from.

Here's some news:

*****************************

Ezra Klein on Politico

The Huffington Post and Roll Call are both reporting that Joe Lieberman
notified Harry Reid that he will filibuster health-care reform if the
final bill includes an expansion of Medicare. Previously, Lieberman had
been cool to the idea, saying he wanted to make sure it wouldn't
increase the deficit or harm Medicare's solvency (and previously to
that, he supported it as part of the Gore/Lieberman health-care plan).
That comforted some observers, as the CBO is expected to say it will do
neither. Someone must have given Lieberman a heads-up on that, as he's
decided to make his move in advance of the CBO score, the better to
ensure the facts of the policy couldn't impede his opposition to it.

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To put this in context, Lieberman was invited to participate in the
process that led to the Medicare buy-in. His opposition would have
killed it before liberals invested in the idea. Instead, he skipped the
meetings and is forcing liberals to give up yet another compromise.
Each time he does that, he increases the chances of the bill's failure
that much more. And if there's a policy rationale here, it's not
apparent to me, or to others who've interviewed him. At this point,
Lieberman seems primarily motivated by torturing liberals. That is to
say, he seems willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of
people in order to settle an old electoral score.

This leaves Reid in a tough spot. Sam Stein runs through his remaining options, none of which are very good:

The first is to convince the Senator to support Democrats in breaking a
Republican filibuster before casting a vote against the bill. This
would allow for the legislation to pass with Lieberman still
registering his opposition. Lieberman, however, has said he considers
the procedural vote to cut off debate to be of the same significance as
a vote on the bill itself.

Andy Schmookler, an award-winning author, political commentator, radio talk-show host, and teacher, was the Democratic nominee for Congress from Virginia's 6th District. His new book -- written to have an impact on the central political battle of our time -- is (more...)